The 9th Judgment (Women's Murder Club 9)

There was no place I’d rather be.

No one I’d rather be with than Joe.

Chapter 101

I WAS AT my desk when Brenda buzzed me on the intercom. “Lindsay, there’s a package downstairs for you. Kevin doesn’t want to send it up without you checking it out.”

I took the stairs down to the lobby and found our security guard waiting near the metal detector. He held an ordinary black nylon computer case, my name on a label, many yards of clear packing tape wound around it. I wasn’t expecting a package. And I sure didn’t like the look of this one.

“I ran it through the metal detector,” our security guard said. “There’s metal in here, but I can’t make out what it is.”

“Where did this case come from?”

“I was checking people through, a whole bunch of kids from the law school, looking in camera bags and so forth, and when I turned around, this case was on the table. Nobody claimed it.”

“I’m calling the bomb squad, no offense,” I said.

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“None taken,” Kevin said. “I’ll get the head of security.”

I was shaking again, my clothes sticking to me, my bruised shoulder throbbing. The hard crack of exploding bombs went off in my mind, and I thought about Joe saying that it was so easy to make a bomb, it was scary.

I called Jacobi from behind a marble column at the far side of the lobby and told him about the mystery case. I said that Peter Gordon probably had the skills to blow up the Hall of Justice.

“Get out of there, Boxer,” Jacobi said.

“You, too,” I said. “We’re evacuating the building.”

As I spoke, the alarm went off inside the Hall, and the head of security’s voice came over the PA system, ordering all fire wardens to their posts.

The building was emptied—judges and juries and prosecutors and cops and a floor full of jailed detainees all filed down the back staircase and out to the street. I left through the main door and listened to my heart lay down a three-four beat against my eardrums. Within seven or eight minutes, the building was cleared and the bomb truck was parked in front of the Hall.

I watched from behind a cordon of cops as a robot with X-ray plates in its “arms” rolled up the wheelchair ramp and through the front door of the Hall. Conklin and Chi came down to wait it out with me, and together we watched the bomb-squad tech, masked and swaddled in an antifrag, flame-retardant suit, walk behind the robot with his remote control.

I waited for the detonation I was sure would come. Then we waited some more. When I was at the screaming point, Conklin said, “We could be here all night.”

So we went to MacBain’s.

It was like an office party in there. Law enforcement personnel from all disciplines were whooping it up while waiting to hear if they had offices to go back to. I had my hand in the Beer Nuts when my phone rang.

It was Lieutenant Bill Berry from the bomb squad. “Your so-called bomb has been rendered safe.”

I walked with Conklin and Chi to the bomb truck, which was now parked in the lot behind the Hall. I knocked on the door of the van, and when it opened, I took the case from Lieutenant Berry’s hand.

“So, what’s in it?” I asked him.

“Christmas in September,” he said. “I think you’re going to like it.”

Chapter 102

“SOMETHING YOU’RE GONNA like,” echoed Chi. “What would that be?”

“I’m hoping for puppies,” I said.

Conklin held the door, and the three of us joined the throng of workers returning to their offices. We climbed to the third floor, turned right into Homicide, and crowded into Jacobi’s office as he took his swivel chair and sat down heavily.

Jacobi’s space was a pigpen as always, no offense to pigs. I moved a pile of folders from a side chair, Conklin took the chair beside me, knees bumping the desk, and Chi leaned against the doorjamb in his neat gray suit and string tie.